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The Authoritarian Mirror: Bob Altemeyer's Research and the Age of MAGA and Reform

In 2006, a quietly retiring psychology professor at the University of Manitoba published a free PDF on the internet and gave it away. Bob Altemeyer had spent four decades measuring, testing, and cataloguing a personality type he called the Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) follower — someone who submits excessively to authority, expresses aggression in that authority's name, and clings to social convention as though civilisation itself depends on it. He was not confident the book would find a large audience. He had already accepted that colleagues would rather schedule unnecessary dental procedures than ask him about his research at parties. He was wrong about the audience. The book, The Authoritarians, became an underground classic of political psychology. John Dean — Richard Nixon's former counsel, the man who helped bring down a presidency — had already used Altemeyer's research in his own work, Conservatives Without Conscience. And when Donald Trump descended a golden esca...
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Good Food and Ground Rent

How a land value tax could drive a food security based economy There is a quiet contradiction at the heart of most discussions about sustainable and relocalized food. Advocates speak passionately about shortening supply chains, restoring small farms, rebuilding market gardens on the urban fringe, and reconnecting communities with the land that feeds them. Yet the economics of land itself — its cost, its ownership, its speculation — are rarely interrogated with equal passion. This is a serious omission, because the price of land is one of the most powerful forces shaping what gets grown, where, by whom, and for whom. A national Land Value Tax (LVT) — or what we might more plainly call a National Ground Rent — would strike directly at this neglected root, and in doing so, would transform the economic landscape for relocalized, sustainable, secure food production. The unsustainable food system is based on a core land rights problem. To understand why LVT matters for food, we first need ...
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The Citizen's Dilemma

  To all my friends who are dissatisfied with the way we are presently governed—whether you support the two main parties, their minority middle party, or the two upcoming challengers Reform or Greens—this concerns all of us. Democracy demands more than just your vote Let's start with what unites us: frustration. If you feel that British politics isn't working as it should, you're in good company. Across the political spectrum, people sense that something fundamental isn't functioning properly. We all share this frustration. Perhaps you're frustrated that Brexit hasn't delivered what you hoped—or that we left at all. Perhaps you're angry about immigration levels—or about hostile environment policies. Perhaps you despair at climate inaction—or at net zero costs. Perhaps you're outraged by inequality—or by tax burdens. Perhaps you feel ignored by Westminster—or smothered by it. Here's the remarkable thing: all of these frustrations are simultaneously va...
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